A New Metric-Based Approach for the Evaluation of Customer Satisfaction in the IT Area

Abstract

For the existence and growth of enterprises the protected sales of goods and performances are of decisive opinion. In order to ensure this, the acceptance of the products and performances by the customers is depended on indirect criterion mainly: the customer satisfaction. A lot of criteria and methods with help of the science were or are worked out to “measure” satisfaction or discontent of the customers to the inquiry.

Our paper describes the general satisfaction aspects and their coherence between customer satisfaction, quality and customer loyalty as well as their significance for the development of an enterprise. After the classification of methods for measuring customer’s satisfaction different methods for the recording of customer satisfaction are shown. A basic model for customer satisfaction is introduced for recording and assessment at software products using software metrics related to the product, process and resources aspects. This method attemps to measure directly the causes to evaluate their effect to the customer satisfaction.

In order to evaluate customer satisfaction, a tool COSAM was implemented that allows a metrics-based assessment besides the traditional assessment of the customer satisfaction by customer interviews. On the other hand, the tool can be used for experiments of a given level of customer satisfaction to analyse the effects of successful measured aspects such as ISO 9000 certification, a high level of the developer skills or a high level in the CMM evaluation.